Houston users ask what happened as AT&T outage reports surge

AT&T users found reason to spend Labor Day questioning their WiFi carrier on Monday. According to DownDetector, a website that tracks user-reported issues regarding websites and service providers, a massive surge of reported outages occurred shortly after noon, before reported issues spiked around 1 p.m. Nearly 1,700 reports were logged on the tracker. The company had been dealing with prior outages early Monday morning as nearly 1,300 reports were logged around 2:17 a.m. The largest cluster of outages reported came from the Houston area, followed by Spring, Dallas, Fort Worth, Cypress and Austin. More than 40 percent of reported outages cited problems tied to 5G home internet. Broadband internet and WiFi were also major concerns at 28 percent and 24 percent, respectively. AT&T subscribers took to X to voice their displeasure as one customer revealed their issues with the service provider had been ongoing since Sunday. "@ATTHelp @Google Can one of you please explain the problems in the Houston area with very slow internet/no service related to Google applications over AT&T fiber?" Judge Lincoln Goodwin wrote. Goodwin is a Justice of the Peace who presides over Precinct 4 in Harris County. The irony? It was his first tweet on the platform in more than four years. Other notable platforms that saw a spike in outages included Google and its email service, Gmail; YouTube; Fortnite and the Xbox Network (better known as Xbox Live). The AT&T Help account on X was flooded with users wondering what the issue was. According to AT&T's official website, the outages in some cases would not be resolved anywhere from 10 to 41 hours for fiber cable issues to 13 hours for internet. One AT&T user in Liberty reported their estimated repair time would be 29 hours. AT&T has yet to publicly reveal what occurred for the outages to take place. Monday's issues are the second known widespread outage occurrence in the last two years for the tech giant. In 2024, it blamed a technical error for an outage that knocked out cellphone service for thousands of its customers before service was later restored. "Based on our initial review, we believe that today's outage was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network, not a cyber attack," the Dallas-based company said at the time. Last month, Verizon and T-Mobile took to X amid reports of widespread outages for their carriers as well as AT&T, with T-Mobile suggesting the issue was for customers attempting to reach individuals on rival carriers.